Warning—Sprinting is addictive

Matt asked me to pop an article together for BMC and I'm very pleased to share my experiences with fellow club members.

Around 1997 I decided to purchase and build a kit car. At the time a Caterham was around £9k, a Westfield £5k but my budget stretched to a Robin Hood at £750 and a knackered mk4 Cortina! Over two years I transformed this into a rather nice looking kit car, full of Wilton carpet, oak dash and comfy seats and I was very proud of my creation. In the intervening years between 2000 and now, I went from a bottom of the class club event at Scammonden Dam to British Sprint Champion, and what a fun 20 years they've been.

The Robin Hood quickly was stripped of all its luxuries in attempt to make it go faster and the Pinto gave way to a Zetec engine and I then removed Cortina subframes and manufactured my own suspension and eventually the Robin Hood was consistently beating Caterham's which as you can imagine put a few noses out of joint. This car was no longer deemed a kit car but a one off special so I thought “time to move on”. I had a good Zetec engine and found a single seater racing car that was designed for Formula Ford Zetec it was only six years old and I got a loan to purchase from the Bank of Giulia (my long supporting wife).

Mid 2000s at Aintree photo by Steve Wilkinson

A Formula Ford with homemade downforce additions

I have developed that chassis during the last 20 years increasing its capability in all areas and had a fantastic time doing so. In the initial days it was a case of adding a front wing and rear wing and bodging a bigger floor and gradually times got quicker and took my first FTD at Curborough in 2002 - back in the days when you got a laurel wreath for such an occasion! And even managed a few British Sprint run off placings over the coming years, although I do remember one season when I was always 13th fastest and consistently failed to make the top 12 run offs.

Around 2010, I purchased from the late Bill Gouldthorpe his chassis and engine which was an almost identical RF96, predominantly so I could move from Zetec to Duratec and fit some clever trickery from SBD. Bills chassis and my chassis were sister cars in a Portuguese Formula Ford team and over the winter I split both cars and took the best of each to build my current car. As the season loomed, I still hadn't sold the No.2 car that I put together from the worst bits, but with two weeks to go someone visited and the car was sold and shipped ironically back to Portugal and I' m pleased to say for £2k more than I bought Bills car!

The first thing to do was replace the glass fibre body work with carbon fibre. My good mate Martin Pickles made some superb moulds after repairing the body work and then we got these turned into carbon fibre by John Hansell of Fibrelyte. And so, it went from 26 to 5.5 kg. I did

go a bit silly one season and got the overall weight down to 391kg, however things kept breaking at this and I've subsequently found that a bit more strength has added reliability and we sit at 421 kilogrammes now which is still good for the 2 litre racing class and a cracking 307bhp normally aspirated Duratec, revving to 9200rpm. A lovely stat is that when I change up to the next gear, the start revs are 8000!

This chassis combination has been developed continually, but there are still many parts of 26 year old Formula Ford on it. I think the only reason I keep doing this expensive and addictive game, is that the car has more performance than the driver and I'm constantly the weak link in the chain.

5 years ago, with the help of Mark Bailey, I upgraded from a manual four speed LD200 gearbox to a JL 5 speed sequential. This was the first JL box in the UK and I benefited from the development work being done in the US for a race series. SBD supplied the gearbox control so at the same time we upgraded to fly by wire throttle bodies, paddleshift, new loom and air actuation system. The exciting day came when we had to set this new combination up and I distinctly remember Steve Broughton doing a fantastic job despite being in a lot of pain due to a tooth issue and the day ending in the dark driving up and down the industrial estate where his workshop is. I couldn't wait for the first event now I was a proper racing driver with flappy paddle gear shift changes!

Before this season, I had only one 3 Brit-

ish championship run offs the first being at Coombe in 2008. The previous week I had been at the circuit as my brother took his old Mercedes estate round on a track day but I paid to have some tuition and got the advice of an old Coombe sage. He taught me a wet line or two and due to the non aerodynamic nature of my formula Ford based car it has good mechanical grip and coupled with good tyres I managed to outperform some V8s that day and the memory is still very vivid and available on youtube. The other two run off wins have also been in the wet. 2021 however, we have had 11 run offs from the potential 32 available, as I say, life in the old chassis yet!

4 years ago, a significant upgrade to the performance of the car came when I became acquainted with Naser Teymourian, who was studying at Oxford Brookes University and the aerodynamic performance of my car was his final year submission. He visited Nottingham several times and with a whole series of measurements and photographs created a CFD model which was run through the university computers in several iterations and he proposed a series of modifications. I then got them manufactured and the deal was to feedback the results. The following season with the same engine and gearbox my lap gains were between 1 and 4 seconds at every track! Believe in the power of Aerodynamics!

So why has 2021 gone so well I hear you ask? At the end of 2019 I shared my car for the weekend at Anglesey with Alan Muggleston of Triple M. The rest of the paddock ran a sweep stake as to how many runs it would take him before he beat me having never driven the car. And

Just before I came off at Anglesey 2021 (Picture: Phil Hen)

for the answer, it was three! I knew this would be the case and I’d hope to learn how he would do it by use of the video and data logging on board. To find out, why don’t you attend one of his days training courses held at the start of every season at Blyton. What I didn't anticipate was his continual adjusting of the car after every run for the whole weekend and the stunning improvement it made. The car I took away that weekend was a totally different car to the one I arrived with and the handling became phenomenal. I was left with a job list over the winter to go and extend the adjustment range which I did.

Whilst some competitors didn't seem bothered about competing in 2020 as there were no valid championships I was keen to get out, so that I wasn't rusty when we got to 2021. I also had a fresh engine from SBD over the winter of 2019 but nothing really changed on the car other than the adjustments as Alan suggestion and careful maintenance. 2021 saw more practice events, more testing and this paid dividends when it came to the British rounds. I had a surprisingly good start at the Blyton weekend with 4 run off wins, although this is my local circuit and I had lots of testing, but still was very pleased as it was against big V8 opposition. Unfortunately the V8 of Terry Homes and Graham Porret had a crash chasing my times and this left them out of action for the following weekend or so. But for the rest of the season, we have been within a few tenths of each other, sometimes Terry quicker, sometimes my 2 litre delivering the goods at circuits such as Anglesey & Knockhill but I have nothing in my armoury for the 250bhp deficit I have for the GWS where he beat me by 3 seconds.

As well as 3 V8’s this season, there have been the more powerful Ecoboosts driven by Pete Goulding and Graham Blackwell. Again, some meetings we are a few hundredths apart but luckily I’ve been the right side! And finally, not forgetting the 2 litre competitors of Matt Hillam and Ste-

ve Broughton in their modern F3 Dallara, cracking competition all season and exceedingly close at times.

This year I gave up working full time – 58 years old you know, got to slow down at some point, and I think the 4 days weekends help. The closer it got to pulling off the British Championship, the more time I spent on checking and rechecking! The car has been 100% reliable all season, the only exception being at Knockhill with an alternator bolt breaking, but we lashed it out the way with a large cable tie with minutes to spare and did a qualifying run on battery power only. Mind you I needn’t have bothered, as on my scoring run I put all the right wheels/tyres on, just not necessary in the right order (to paraphrase Eric Morecombe). How on earth I didn’t stick it in the tyre wall on launch I’ll never know!

The Anglesey weekend, where I became the first 2 litre car to clinch the championship for several decades was wet. I had convinced my sponsor Telsonic to supply the 2022 tyres early to give me the best possible chance, so I had brand new Pirelli wets. I was a little overambitious of their capabilities in practice and in the pouring rain went off the track after I couldn’t stop from 123mph, but no damage done. Qualifying was a more ‘steady Eddy’ affair, and so was scoring run 1. I kept it on the track and put enough

Beer time…! (Picture: Kim Broughton)

points between me and Matt, to make it impossible for him to overtake me. So, in the tradition of a good days sport and the season result, I withdrew from the event and started an alcohol rehydration program!

I had brought 30 beers and individual cheese portions to hand out to my fellow competitors and despite the rain we had a great afternoon. Mind you, I found more empty Tyskie cans in the trailer the following morning than I had thought I’d drunk. 9am, 4th car out and 140mph soon wakes you up, then time for cheese on toast from the camper van and an expresso! A good relaxed day and FTD to boot! In case the British Championship came down to our last event, the rearranged GWS, I entered the ¾ lap Combe event the week before and kept it quiet for some sneaky practice. Cries of cheating from my fellow competitors, I’d call it ‘initiative’! FTD ahead of the big V8 of Terry Graves set my confidence up for the following weekend.

As a thankyou for the season’s success, I paid and shared my car with Alan Mugglestone again. He still beat me, despite him running first on cold tyres, but only by 0.8 over the 115 second run. My takeaway from the event was that despite the car feeling good, he was pushing with adjustments every run to make it quicker, such as lifting the ride height by 2.5mm was a good move!

2021 pots

Really looking forward to taking Giulia to the Dinner of Champions where the winners of all the MSUK national championships get their awards, and hoping for a selfie with Lewis! I think we might push the boat out that night and stay at the RAC Club in Pall Mall – makes up for all those years spent sleeping in the trailer!